Weiner L P, Johnson R T
Birth Defects Orig Artic Ser. 1971 Feb;7(1):72-7.
Slow viral infections are characterized by a long incubation period, protracted clinical course, and limited host range. Scrapie of sheep and kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease of man are slow infections which have been regarded at one time or another as being of genetic etiology. The initial assumption that these represented hereodofamilial degenerative diseases came from their occurrence in families or in population aggregates, their chronic afebrile clinical courses and their histopathologic changes of noninflammatory degeneration. The role of genetics in these diseases is uncertain although in scrapie genetic susceptibility appears important in the natural infection. A more intimate virus-gene interrelationship in the form of a temperate infection has been postulated; however, little evidence exists at this time to support this hypothesis.
慢病毒感染的特点是潜伏期长、临床病程迁延以及宿主范围有限。绵羊的瘙痒病、人类的库鲁病和克雅氏病都是慢感染，它们曾一度被认为是遗传病因所致。最初认为这些是遗传性家族性退行性疾病，是基于它们在家族或人群聚集区中的发生情况、慢性无热临床病程以及非炎性变性的组织病理学变化。遗传学在这些疾病中的作用尚不确定，尽管在瘙痒病中，遗传易感性在自然感染中似乎很重要。有人推测存在一种温和感染形式的更密切的病毒 - 基因相互关系；然而，目前几乎没有证据支持这一假说。
